


Dreams Are the Seedlings of Realities

by troubled_midnight



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, My First Smut, Post-Reichenbach, Reunion, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-06 00:02:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1837000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troubled_midnight/pseuds/troubled_midnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Technically speaking, therefore, John reacting to Sherlock’s return by fucking him into the mattress is included in that unallocated 1% reserved for the spectacularly unlikely. But it is safe to say that not even Sherlock saw that one coming. And the absolute cherry on top for the world’s only consulting detective? He has absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> NB - Spoilers for Season 3
> 
> This was inspired by beltainefaerie's ficlet Think But This and All Is Mended (https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097939) which I recommend you read first as this work references it and is my take on what might have happened next. As it says in the tags, this is my first smut, so I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> "The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities." James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Sherlock is rarely surprised, and for the most part that’s exactly how he likes it. On the (very) rare occasion when that emotion creeps up on him, he usually only enjoys it when it arises as the result of a million details and observations coalescing and going supernova when he finally solves a particularly thorny mystery of the locked-room-double-murder variety.

He’s calculated the odds (to several decimal places, naturally) of all the possible reactions John might have to his return from the dead, which roughly break down as follows:

85% involve John committing an act of bodily harm on Sherlock. This is further subdivided into three more specific possibilities:

      50% – fist to the face

      30% – strangling

      5% – head-butting

of which 75% will be accompanied by John swearing loudly and at length, and likely questioning Sherlock’s parentage in that charmingly colloquial way of his.

 The remaining 15% is divided between several possible but increasingly unlikely scenarios:

   5% – John pursing his lips, shaking his head and making tea

   5% – John pursing his lips, shaking his head and walking away

    3% – John shooting Sherlock

    1% – John fainting/having a heart attack/stroke

Which leaves 1% (there’s always something …) for the utterly unexpected, because John does actually possess the ability to surprise Sherlock, and on the (very) rare occasions when this has occurred, Sherlock has observed – to his, well, surprise – that he actually quite enjoys it.

Technically speaking, therefore, John reacting to Sherlock’s return by fucking him into the mattress is included in that unallocated 1% reserved for the spectacularly unlikely. But it is safe to say that not even Sherlock saw that one coming.

Sherlock rolls onto his side, the better to observe this utterly familiar yet still surprising army doctor, physician and soldier, a man who will save a life or take one without hesitation, whichever is necessary in any given crisis. Sherlock finds that his desultory effort to remember how to breathe like a normal person (boring) is completely derailed as the beguiling paradox that is John Watson propels his mind even further into the blissfully uncharted realms of the unexpected, which in turn triggers an entirely cerebral kind of orgasm that blindsides him as thoroughly as did the physical one he’s just enjoyed with John.

And the absolute cherry on top for the world’s only consulting detective? He has absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next.

 

John is lying with his eyes closed and concentrating on bringing his heart rate down to something that won’t give him a stroke. He’s listening to the miraculous lunatic sprawled bonelessly beside him doing something similar. John doesn’t need to look at Sherlock to know the detective is busy deducing him – he can feel the man’s eyes boring holes in his head and can practically hear the infernal quantum clockwork of Sherlock’s brain as it reshuffles reality to accommodate whatever the fuck just happened.

_Swear to god_ , John thinks, _if I open my eyes to find the annoying bastard looking smug and knowing, I’ll have no choice but to slap it off his face._

He’s felt the urge to do this before, of course, as has every single person Sherlock has met to date or will ever meet in future. But John has only hit him once – reluctantly and then only when provoked by Sherlock hitting him first – before all that unpleasantness with The Bloody Woman. This time, John seriously doubts he’ll be able to pull the punch.

But John had definitely heard a trace of something … uncertain in Sherlock’s voice when John realised he wasn’t dreaming, and this gives the good doctor pause. Perhaps there are some things not even Professor Smug can anticipate or predict.

As John’s heart somewhat reluctantly gives up on its efforts to burst out of his chest in a terminal blaze of _Alien_ -inspired glory, he registers vaguely that he’s experiencing a whole smorgasbord of emotions for the first time in a very long while, and it’s not exactly comfortable. The agony of Sherlock’s suicide had gouged him hollow from the heart out on a relentless tide of pain until there was little left of the man he’d been. Whatever motions his body had stumbled through since could in no way be described as living. As interminable days slid into weeks and months, the terrain of John’s nightmares had altered, abandoning the blood-soaked shifting sands of Afghanistan for cold, hard pavement and Sherlock’s life bleeding out in his hands. As his subconscious invaded his sleeping mind, the agony of loss had subtly morphed into the phantom-limb ache of unrequited longing, and several months ago, John had begun to dream, often and vividly, a life he’d never had – and never would.

It began, as many things do, with a simple kiss, but of course things are never simple for long when Sherlock is involved. The first time John woke gasping and rock hard after dreaming in excruciating detail about what it would be like to kiss that Cupid’s bow, to tease those expressive lips with his tongue until Sherlock was kissing him back, his initial response had been kneejerk horror. In spite of widespread belief to the contrary, John and Sherlock had never been partners in that sense, and John was fairly certain he’d never consciously thought about Sherlock in sexual terms. Yes, the man was undoubtedly attractive, and that voice could tempt the fucking Archangel Gabriel to sin if Sherlock so desired, but such observations on John’s part had been purely aesthetic … or so John had believed before these dreams started.

That first dream-meeting of lips had led inexorably to touching of other kinds. John had always found Sherlock’s elegant hands compelling, and the first time those clever fingers ran through John’s hair to cradle the back of his head and pull him deeper into the kiss, John’s dream-self had simply forgotten what breathing was. Entirely of their own volition, John’s hands were cupping Sherlock’s chin, his thumbs tracing those ridiculous cheekbones. If Sherlock’s eyes were mesmerising from across a room, this close they were utterly hypnotic, the ever-shifting opal of the irises a halo circumscribing bottomless black holes of need and desire. John trailed the tips of his fingers over smooth skin and rougher stubble to the unexpected softness of those sinful lips, which were currently quirked in a smile John could only describe as ‘knowing’. That thought was immediately confirmed when Sherlock licked one of John’s fingers from base to tip before drawing it slowly into the shocking warmth of his mouth and exploring it with his tongue in a manner that seared a line through John’s body from his finger to his rapidly hardening cock. There was no mistaking the amusement in Sherlock’s eyes when John tried and utterly failed to suppress a groan. And then John’s breath stopped in his chest for a second time as he watched the humour fade, to be replaced by a feral, predatory darkness that John knew would swallow him whole. Sherlock slid his mouth off John’s finger with a positively obscene slurping sound and pulled John in for a deeper kiss, all tongues and teeth, heat and promise. John tried to draw back to take a breath, but Sherlock’s fingers were iron around his skull and John soon gave up a fight he realised he had absolutely no desire to win. If he passed out, so be it. In fact, he could probably die a happy man at that moment, lost in the hottest fucking kiss of his entire life. Although it would be a crying shame to expire without following the promise of those sensual lips and that clever, clever tongue to its orgasmic fulfilment.

And that was the point at which John had woken from that first dream, the fingers of one hand against his lips and the other hand already stroking himself to a spine-bending climax before he was even fully conscious.

The shock of that first awakening, however, was nothing compared to what he’s feeling now as he lies next to a man he knows much more intimately in his dreams than he ever has in the waking world. John is acutely aware of the long line of Sherlock’s body, ever so close to his but carefully not touching. John opens his eyes and turns his head to find Sherlock lying on his side, head propped up on one hand, greedily cataloguing every minute muscle-twitch in John’s face and filing them for future reference. John has always been a blusher, and there is absolutely _nothing_ he can do to stop the heat rising inexorably up his throat and cheeks. Sherlock’s lips are curved in a smile, yet his eyes are anything but knowing. John realises with a jolt that Sherlock is … wary … uncertain, even, and the good doctor is momentarily stunned. He’s never seen Sherlock uncertain about _anything_. Geological ages pass as the two men simply stare at each other. Eventually, when it becomes abundantly clear that Sherlock will wait until the end of time for John to make the next move – blimey, another first – the good doctor abandons the notion of caution to the four winds, for he simply _has_ to know what those lips really feel like. But nothing in his dreams has even vaguely prepared him for the reality of a just-fucked Sherlock lying in his bed, rosy spots of colour high on his pale cheeks and that unprecedented fight-or-flight uncertainty in eyes normally sardonic and so, so assured.

All or nothing, then. But when has it ever been anything else with Sherlock? John reaches out a hand and closes the distance between them. Sherlock remains utterly motionless, his eyes locked with John’s as he traces Sherlock’s cheekbone with his fingertips, skirting the purpling bruise and trailing down over smooth skin and rougher stubble, sparking a dream-memory so strong it makes him shiver. When John’s fingertips reach Sherlock’s lips, both men exhale a breath neither had registered holding. Sherlock’s lips part and the tip of his tongue connects with the pad of John’s forefinger, and just as John’s thinking for the umpteenth time that Sherlock must be able to read his mind, the entire fucking universe stops turning as the uncertainty fades, to be replaced by mischief and heat as Sherlock runs his tongue the length of John’s finger before sucking it into his mouth. John has seen that tongue flay people alive with invective and scorn, but right now it’s soft and pliant, caressing John’s finger with a gentleness the doctor had never been certain Sherlock was capable of. John’s eyelids flutter closed, only to snap open again when he feels Sherlock’s teeth press into his skin. He watches, shivering, as teeth, tongue and lips caress and then release, breaking the only point of contact between them.

John is utterly unprepared for the wave of loss and longing that sweeps over him, closely followed by a sound that begins as a groan and for reasons passing understanding transforms into a laugh that bubbles up from somewhere deep inside him where all the pieces of his soul that died with Sherlock have been entombed for two long years. He laughs until he’s crying, and gasping for breath, and Sherlock just lies there, grinning like a lunatic and waiting for John to get a grip.

_Words_ , John thinks, _use your words, Watson. Come on, snap to it._ He takes a deep, steadying breath and …

‘Well, fuck me, Sherlock,’ is the sentence his mangled brain deems appropriate for the occasion.

Sherlock does laugh then, a rich, warm, tactile sound John feels somewhere in his solar plexus.

‘Oh, John, I think you’ll find you’ve got that the wrong way round. As usual.’

John gapes, momentarily undone by the first normal thing that’s happened since he lay down to sleep in some other lifetime. And then he purses his lips, and shakes his head, and says, ‘Right, you mad bastard – for that _you’re_ making the tea.’


	2. A Cup of Tea Would Restore My Normality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “At the center of an uncertain and possibly illusionary universe there would always be tea.”  
> Eoin Colfer, _And Another Thing …_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, for your delectation, is Chapter 2. There is angst. Did I mention the angst? It'll all be OK in the end, but ...
> 
> Story title courtesy of _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ by Douglas Adams, who would have been 62 this year. Gone but never forgotten—so long, dear Douglas, and thanks for all the fish.

Sherlock doesn’t often make the tea. It’s not that he lacks the ability (Seriously? As if), or that he can’t make it exactly the way John likes it (because he absolutely can: strong—five minutes of soaking and dunking; splash of milk—whole not skimmed; one and one-third teaspoons of sugar exactly—white not brown, which John prefers in his coffee; mug not cup—except when Mycroft or Mrs Hudson can’t be dissuaded from “dropping by”). Every single thing Sherlock has learned about John (including how he takes his beverages, hot and cold) since this curiosity of an army doctor walked into the mortuary at St Bart’s looking for a flat-share has been meticulously recorded on expensive high-quality, acid-free archival card stock, exhaustively annotated and finally catalogued with the ruthless precision of Sherlock’s sock index in a simple but exquisitely crafted European walnut box that the detective keeps within arm’s reach of the thinking couch in his mind palace’s vast library.

No, Sherlock much prefers to watch John make the tea, but not for any of the tedious reasons concocted by the depressingly unimaginative idiots at the Yard. It has nothing to do with ordering John around, or controlling him, or anything so mundane (plus Sherlock knows, although he would never admit it, not even with a gun pressed to his head, that even he can’t make John do something he really doesn’t want to do). No, the truth is so much grander than that. For when John engages in the holy ritual of Making Tea, he channels the very spirit of the British Empire, which was in large part created and sustained by the making and drinking of vast quantities of tea. John in pursuit of tea is the personification of the indefatigable colonial march that made Victoria Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and Empress of India.

Sherlock is a man who can appreciate the precision of a perfect methodology honed by trial and error, exhaustive experimentation and diligent practice. The result is a study in the joy of pursuing a single purpose to the exclusion of everything else that never fails to soothe and comfort the detective, particularly when his kaleidoscopic hallucinatory nightmare of a brain is nihilistically intent on hurling itself across the event horizon of the black hole of crushing boredom. Most people (imbeciles, the lot of them) believe that Sherlock has no need of comfort and wouldn’t even recognize it if he fell over it. The truth is that when it comes to comfort, as with so many other things, Sherlock’s needs do not conform to normal (boring, tedious) definitions of the concept. Sherlock has just returned from two years of intrigue, plot and counter-plot, industrial and political espionage, double- and triple-crossing, captivity, torture and near-death experiences. These activities have tested his intellect and his stamina to their utmost limits, and a large part of him has reveled in the indescribable joy of Absolutely Not Being Bored At All for a longer period than he can hitherto recall. But even Sherlock needs to go offline occasionally (infuriating but true—sleep-deprivation hallucinations are Not the Fun Kind), and dismantling the criminal empire of as dementedly cunning an opponent as Jim Moriarty has offered precious little opportunity for anything more restorative than the odd couple of hours of unconsciousness here and there which have laughingly had to pass for sleep.

Sherlock is exhausted. Utterly spent. And in dire need of the kind of care and comfort only John Watson can provide. It’s the simple things you miss the most when people are constantly trying to murder you with surprisingly inventive malice and aforethought, and one of those simple things that Sherlock has missed beyond measure is the deeply satisfying and fundamentally comforting observation of John Making Tea.

All of that notwithstanding, however, the unprecedented events of the past forty-three and a half minutes have miraculously (if Sherlock believed in such superstitious claptrap, which he doesn’t, but _anyway_ ) fulfilled Sherlock’s long-desired but heretofore destined-never-to-be-realized wish that John would wake up one day and work out that he is as in love with Sherlock Holmes in his own way every bit as much as Sherlock is in love with John Watson in his. Today, apparently, is that day, and if it took hurling himself off a tall building and subsequently returning from the grave to make John see the absolutely blindingly obvious, then so be it. If John wants Sherlock to make tea while he takes a moment or two to assimilate the undeniable fact that he has just fucked a dead man, then Sherlock will gladly make as much tea as John will drink.

Because Sherlock would very much like John to fuck him again, as soon as is humanly possible. Repeatedly. And vice versa. Ditto. Until they’ve both had enough, which Sherlock estimates will be never plus ten million years, give or take.

And Sherlock, of course, is one hundred and ten percent aware, as he crawls in all his sinuous glory to the edge of the bed to go and make tea, of exactly how irresistibly fucking _gorgeous_ he looks wearing nothing but a sheet.

 

 

To say John is surprised when Sherlock simply nods and gets up to do as he’s told and make tea would be an understatement of truly epic proportions. But get up Sherlock does, although for reasons John can’t be arsed to fathom he insists on taking the sheet with him, which results in a minor tug-of-war tussle that John abandons when he realizes he’d much rather have tea than a sheet. And he does still have the duvet, of course, beneath which he burrows with every intention of going back to sleep until there is actual tea, because … Sherlock: brain the size of a planet, attention span of a guppy for anything less than a seven.

Unfortunately, John is utterly unprepared for the panic that grips him in its cold and clammy hands the moment Sherlock and the trailing edge of the sheet disappear from his sight. Apparently part of his brain is still pretty firmly convinced that this is a dream, quite possibly a full-on hallucination resulting from the nervous breakdown he’s been promising himself since Sherlock jumped from that rooftop, effectively taking John to the grave along with him, and that any moment now he’ll wake up strapped to a bed for his own safety in some institution for the incurably insane.

Before his brain even registers that his body is acting entirely independently of neurological input, he’s out from under the duvet and wrapping a dressing gown he doesn’t remember picking up around his panicking body as he thunders down the stairs, across the living room and into the kitchen. Where, thank every deity the human race has ever seen fit to worship, Sherlock is still very much a sheet-wrapped corporeal presence, currently reaching into a cupboard for mugs and the tea caddy, all of which are much more accessible now they’re not concealed behind bottles of toxic chemicals and jars containing pickled pieces of organic matter that have absolutely no business being anywhere near the PG Tips.

Hearing John’s somewhat dramatic arrival, Sherlock turns, tea caddy in one hand, two mugs dangling from the forefinger of the other, an eyebrow raised interrogatively. John is utterly overcome by a wave of relief so great it brings him to his knees. But whatever pithy comment Sherlock makes in response is lost in the white noise now filling John’s head as he succumbs to the kind of PTSD attack he usually only experiences in his worst nightmares. The cool, clinical part of the doctor’s brain registers his pounding heart, rapid breathing, rising nausea and muscle spasms, and then the inevitable darkness claims him.

 

He returns to consciousness curled in a fetal ball and struggling, but someone is holding him firmly, quietly repeating his name until John works out that he’s conscious, and that the worst of it is over. Probably. He forces his body to still and takes a couple of deep, shuddering breaths before he opens his eyes. The arms holding him have relaxed a little but are still very much wrapped around him in what could only be described as an embrace. John’s first coherent thought is that he’s warm—normally he’s freezing cold when he jolts screaming from one of his nightmares. Another deep breath and he feels ready to risk opening one eye, and upon doing so almost has a conniption of an entirely different kind when he identifies the source of the warmth. For he’s curled up in Sherlock’s lap, face pressed against the detective’s throat, head resting on his bony shoulder. One of Sherlock’s hands is cradling the back of John’s skull and ever so gently massaging his scalp. The detective’s other arm is wrapped protectively around him, holding John against the muscular warmth of his chest, hand resting on the doctor’s hip. John’s legs are tucked between Sherlock’s thigh and the arm of the sofa, and now that John is more or less back in the real world, he registers that Sherlock has stopped repeating his name and is murmuring softly in … French? Yes, French. John doesn’t speak a word of French, but he needs no translation to be comforted by the movement of Sherlock’s lips against his forehead and the rich baritone purr of that glorious voice rumbling directly from Sherlock’s body to his, where it stirs something John doesn’t have a name for at the moment deep in his belly. They remain just like that for a while, both lost in a feedback loop of warmth and comfort that could go on forever as far as John is concerned.

The doctor knows from combat situations that large quantities of adrenaline dull all but the most animalistic senses required to make the potentially life-saving call between fight or flight. Smell is quick to go and slow to return, for which John has had cause to be grateful every time he’s been wrist-deep in some poor squaddie’s chest or belly in the aftermath of another fucking IED. As his breathing gradually returns to something approaching normal, John’s nose—still pressed against Sherlock’s throat—detects something the good doctor thought he would never experience again. John wouldn’t admit this to another living soul, but in the immediate aftermath of Sherlock’s death, the only thing that kept him from eating his service revolver and joining the detective in blessed oblivion was putting Sherlock’s pillow between his head and the loaded weapon every night until his soul-deep grief and despair mutated to a numbness with which he could coexist, if not actually live.

John will remember with a shudder to his dying day the exact moment when he pressed his face into Sherlock’s pillow and could no longer smell the detective’s unmistakable scent—an almost indescribably synesthetic combination of dark streets at midnight, the Thames beneath Tower Bridge, the lab at St. Bart’s and the interrogation rooms at the Yard, of all the myriad odors that are London, which is Sherlock’s city, and which are therefore Sherlock’s, too. And beneath that, something utterly, uniquely Sherlock—smoke and sulphur, salty sweat and tannic blood, and the exotic botanicals in the overpriced soap the man insists he can’t live without. When that scent faded from the pillow, John lost Sherlock all over again, and he cried, _god_ , he cried, he sobbed until he couldn’t breathe, and that night was the closest he’s ever come to taking his own life.

That’s the smell John’s nose is overwhelmed by now, and he doesn’t even know he’s crying until both of Sherlock’s elegant hands are cupping his face, and those soft, supple lips are kissing his cheeks, and his eyelids, and then the tip of Sherlock’s catlike tongue is ever so gently lapping up the salt of his tears with a reverence John almost cannot bear. When their eyes meet, John sees an emotion he cannot name in the depths of Sherlock’s troubled gaze, and he knows the man is about to ask him a question he doesn’t want to answer.

“John, what have I done to you?”

And there it is. While John searches his shell-shocked psyche for an answer, he allows every last drop of the pain of losing Sherlock to bleed into his eyes, and suddenly he has a name for the expression in Sherlock’s: sorrow wrapped like a shroud around a heartful of shame. _Good_ , thinks John, and he hates himself for that but it’s the bitter truth. He wants Sherlock to feel and comprehend the terrible consequences of doing what his almighty brain decided was best without a moment’s consideration for the emotional scorched earth he’d be leaving behind.

“What have you done to me, Sherlock?” John’s tone is hard, hard as a stretch of pavement that could crack a skull, and cold as the earth he watched shoveled over Sherlock’s coffin. “You ran ahead of me, Sherlock, like you always do. Only this time you went somewhere I couldn’t follow. I wanted to, and god help me I so very nearly did, but—”

John is saved the burden of finishing that open wound of a sentence by Sherlock’s lips on his own, and then Sherlock’s tongue in his mouth, and John does the only thing in the world he wants to do right now, the thing he’s dreamed of helplessly for months on end, lonely, longing, bereft: John kisses Sherlock back, and it’s a slow, wet, all-consuming meeting of tongues confessing something neither of them could articulate in words if they tried from now until doomsday. And suddenly John’s body is moving without his brain’s involvement again, and Sherlock’s hands support and guide him as he turns in the detective’s lap and straddles his thighs. Bringing his hands to Sherlock’s face as the detective’s fingers splay across his back, John leans in until their lips _almost_ touch and murmurs into the heat of Sherlock’s mouth:

“If you ever, _ever_ leave me again, I’ll kill you, Sherlock. I’ll fucking shoot you dead, do you hear me?”

He feels Sherlock’s lips curve into a grin that mirrors his own, and then John’s laughing again, an anguished sound trapped somewhere between hysteria and despair, and they cling to each other like drowning men and laugh until they have to breathe or faint.

When they finally calm themselves, John’s hands are resting on Sherlock’s naked shoulders and the detective’s fingers have wormed beneath John’s dressing gown, where they’re gently tracing up and down his sides, over his hips and across his back in an endless quest for information as John responds to every stroke and caress. John links his fingers behind Sherlock’s elegant neck and leans back a little to take in the truly beautiful sight before him. Sherlock’s like a tinted black and white photograph in the hazy light of dawn now filtering into the room through grimy glass and half-closed curtains. Dark, crazed curls tinged with the faintest hint of auburn. Porcelain skin stained pink along those ridiculous cheekbones. Lips reddened and a little swollen from kissing. John rakes his appreciative gaze down the long alabaster line of Sherlock’s neck and shoulders to the barest hint of rosy nipple peeking above the edge of the sheet. When John’s gaze locks with Sherlock’s again, the detective tries, he really does, but he can’t keep the amusement from his eyes as he watches John’s narrow with sudden realization.

“You look amazing, you know. But of course you do, especially wrapped in that bloody sheet—can’t have a Greek god without his toga.” He swiftly puts a finger against Sherlock’s lips before the impossible man can correct him. “Yes, I know the Greeks didn’t wear togas, but at this particular moment I don’t give a monkey’s chuff what they called their clothes because I’m too busy enjoying how fucking _edible_ you look right now.”

Sherlock’s response to these observations is to grab the edges of John’s dressing gown and reel him in for another kiss, which inevitably brings John’s burgeoning erection alongside Sherlock’s, separated by nothing more than two flimsy layers of flannel and sheet. The detective freezes, no doubt in deference to the good doctor’s oft-repeated insistence that he’s _not_ gay (in spite of _very_ recent evidence to the contrary), but it’s Sherlock’s lucky day because today John doesn’t give a flying fuck whether he’s gay, straight or Martian. Of course, he’s not about to let Sherlock off quite that easily, and allows the horrified expression the detective’s expecting to wash over his features. It takes Sherlock all of two seconds to see through John’s frankly transparent ruse, and only that long because most of the detective’s blood has headed south. He responds by pulling the doctor’s dressing gown wide open and almost off his shoulders. Sherlock takes a moment then to do exactly what John’s just done and savor the sight of the half-naked, very aroused body straddling his lap. John blushes like a blushy thing when Sherlock’s tongue moistens his lower lip as he stares longingly at John’s cock, which is already leaking pre-cum. Then Sherlock’s hands are on the move again, ghosting over John’s hips and around and down to firmly grasp the doctor’s buttocks. Sherlock bites his kiss-swollen lower lip now and makes the most lascivious sound John has _ever_ heard as he very deliberately thrusts his hips. Sherlock is immensely gratified by the sight of John’s eyes rolling back in his head at the sensation of cock rubbing against cock through the barely-there barrier of the sheet. When John’s eyelids flutter open again, his breath catches in his throat as he beholds the raw hunger in Sherlock’s eyes.

“John Watson,” Sherlock says, his usually smooth voice more than a little rough around the edges now, “would you grant me the entirely unexpected but indescribably welcome pleasure of taking you to my bed?”

To the detective’s amusement and the doctor’s ongoing chagrin, John does a bit of fish-mouthed gaping, which Sherlock enjoys for a moment or two before taking pity on him and adding, “We could stay right here, of course, but what I have in mind is probably going to take a while, and we’ll both be much more comfortable in bed. If you’re currently incapable of standing, or indeed walking, I’ll be more than happy to—”

“If you finish that sentence, Sherlock, I’ll be forced to strangle you, which would be such a fucking _tragedy_ right now it’d make _King Lear_ look like vaudeville.”

On a scale of one to asking-for-his-lights-to-be-punched-out, Sherlock’s answering smirk is a fifteen. Quite possibly a twenty. “And how exactly, Doctor, do you think we ended up on the sofa in the first place, hm?”  

John covers his ears and says, “Not listening, Sherlock, not listening, la-la-la-la—”

To which Sherlock responds by using his surprising strength and considerable leverage to surge to his feet. His hands are still firmly holding John’s arse, and the good doctor _almost_ instinctively wraps his legs around Sherlock’s hips before his brain finally catches up with the situation. John can turn his compact body into a deadweight when he wants to, and Sherlock’s grip isn’t quite firm enough to keep him from getting his feet firmly on the floor and planting his palms against the detective’s chest.

“I’ll crawl on my hands and knees before I’ll willingly let you carry me anywhere.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows twitch with undeniable interest, and John’s already regretting his choice of words before the infuriating sod puts a hand on his hip and says, “Promises, promises. The list of pleasures that awaits us is endless, but let’s start with the basics, shall we?” And with that, the detective rearranges that bloody sheet around his statuesque form and glides across the living room as if he’s on wheels. John’s still standing exactly where Sherlock left him when the detective reaches the door. But Sherlock doesn’t stop, and he doesn’t look back. No, the bastard shrugs eloquently and the sheet glides smoothly down his body to pool artfully around his feet. If Sherlock wrapped in a sheet is one of the most tempting things John has seen in a short but eventful life that’s earned him the nickname “Three-Continents Watson,” then Sherlock’s entirely naked splendor sashaying away from him down the hallway completely redefines his understanding of the word “erotic.”

Sherlock’s voice drifts back into the living room.

“If you don’t hurry up, I’m starting without you.”

John doesn’t hurry.

He runs.


End file.
